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Ackerman on Kligman: a Shameful Story in American Clinical Research by Norman Goldfarb

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Ackerman on Kligman: a Shameful Story in American Clinical Research by Norman Goldfarb Vol. 2, No. 4, April 2006 “Can You Handle the Truth?” Ackerman on Kligman: A Shameful Story in American Clinical Research By Norman Goldfarb Disclaimer: This article contains statements of fact and opinion that the author and Journal have not verified. Dr. Kligman declined to be interviewed or to comment. The University of Pennsylvania responded with the file statements at the bottom of this article. The University of Pennsylvania Center of Bioethics declined to comment. Albert M. Kligman Albert M. Kligman, M.D., Ph.D., is among the most celebrated dermatologists in U.S. history, but he has had a checkered career, to say the least: • Dr. Kligman developed Retin-A, an “anti-wrinkle” cream widely used in the treatment of acne and sun-damaged skin. Retin-A is considered by many to be one of the most important scientific advances in the history of U.S. cosmetic dermatology. He has made numerous other contributions to the field of dermatology and has authored well over 1,000 medical articles. • Dr. Kligman created and led a clinical research program at Holmesburg Prison that, for 23 years, set new standards for unabashedly unethical clinical research. During the course of this research, he may have routinely violated all ten articles of the Nuremberg Code. He cannot compete with the record of Josef Mengele (the Nazi “Angel of Death”), but he makes up in quantity for any shortcomings in quality of horror. Neither of those two physicians ever admitted publicly any moral shortcomings in their clinical research programs. Dr. Kligman also experimented on retarded children and senior citizens. Some of his articles, by his own admission, are based on fabricated data. What are we to make of a man of such great accomplishment and such great inhumanity? In weighing his good deeds against his bad, the medical profession has come down solidly on the side of the good. For example: The Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania has a chair in his name; the American Society of Cosmetic Dermatology & Aesthetic Surgery recently named its first two honorees for the newly-created Albert M. Kligman, MD, Visionary Award in Cosmetic Dermatology; and an editorial in the April 2006 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology celebrates him on the occasion of his 90th birthday.1 Dr. Kligman continues to play an active role in clinical research as Emeritus Professor of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. He maintains memberships in the Society for Investigative Dermatology, the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Dermatologic Association, and the American Medical Association. The publication in 1998 of Allen Hornblum’s devastating book titled, “Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison”, apparently made no dent in the high esteem in which the medical profession holds Dr. Kligman. Moreover, in 2000, a lawsuit against him and Penn by 300 prisoner victims was dismissed. A 2003 protest march by 30 subjects of Dr. Kligman’s research failed to deter the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Physicians Subscribe free at http://www.firstclinical.com © 2006 Norman M. Goldfarb from honoring him that same year with its lifetime achievement award. It merits mention that Dr. Kligman has made substantial monetary gifts to these institutions. A. Bernard Ackerman A. Bernard Ackerman, M.D., is generally regarded as the leading dermatopathologist of our day. Following graduation from Phillips Academy, Andover, Princeton University, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, he did residencies in dermatology at Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard before doing a fellowship at Harvard in dermatopathology. For four years, he was Director of Dermatopathology at the University of Miami and for 20 years at New York University. For six years, he headed the Institute for Dermatopathology at Jefferson Medical College, and for 5 years he was Director of the Ackerman Academy of Dermatopathology in New York City, a center that he founded and that for the past 2 years he remains, part time, as Director emeritus. Dr. Ackerman began the International Society of Dermatopathology and two journals: The American Journal of Dermatopathology and Dermatopathology: Practical and Conceptual. He has served as President of local, national, and international societies of dermatology and dermatopathology and has been the recipient of an honorary degree in medicine from three European universities, Giessen in Germany, Patras in Greece, and Pavia in Italy. For nine months in 1966-1967, under the supervision of Dr. Kligman, Dr. Ackerman, while a second year resident in dermatology at Penn, engaged in clinical research at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. In 1998, Dr. Ackerman, in a publication, apologized and expressed regret for having participated in research studies at Holmesburg and for errors in the results of those studies. For the past 10 years, Dr. Ackerman has led a lonely and courageous battle to communicate the horrific nature of Dr. Kligman’s work at Holmesburg prison and to prevent similar “research” in the future. In this interview, his first of this length, he tells the inside story. He pulls no punches and makes no excuses for his role. It is a chilling tale, and a shameful one, that will continue until the perpetrators accept responsibility after decades of denial. Dr. Ackerman calls special attention to the University of Pennsylvania, which, to this day, has never acknowledged fully and unambiguously its culpability, refuses to teach its medical students the lessons that should be learned from it, and continues to heap honors and awards on the man responsible for all of it, Albert M. Kligman, thereby making him a hero rather than a pariah. The Interview Dr. Ackerman, how did you come to work with Dr. Kligman at Holmesburg? I decided to go to Penn for my second year of residency in dermatology in large measure because of Kligman. He had a lot of style at a time when most university dermatologists were without any flavor at all. Before I arrived on July 13, 1966, we had met on several occasions and talked about his research. He told me he had acres of skin at Holmesburg Prison, and what a tremendous service we were doing the prisoners there by doing research on them. About a week after I arrived, the FDA banned Kligman from doing research because he had fabricated data in studies of DMSO at Holmesburg. Moreover, the FDA had forbid him from doing that research and he had gone ahead with it anyway. He disappeared from Penn until mid-September, so I never made it to Holmesburg Prison until then. I did research at Holmesburg for about nine months and then, for reasons various, left Penn to go to Harvard. Subscribe free at http://www.firstclinical.com 2 © 2006 Norman M. Goldfarb The FDA ban lasted only until September? Yes, and it’s quite a story. Kligman had the good fortune of having a Chairman at Penn, Donald Pillsbury, who had clout in Washington. Kligman had other colleagues in dermatology who were helpful to him, but the biggest bonanza of all was that the Surgeon General of the United States at that time was Luther Terry. In an unbelievable stroke of good fortune, Penn offered Terry the deanship. He accepted it, but he didn’t want to arrive at Penn in the midst of the Kligman scandal. So Terry, with Pillsbury and others, quashed the whole thing. Francis Kelsey, the FDA Commissioner, who was responsible for banning Kligman, was completely outflanked. To be reinstated by the FDA, Kligman was required to write an apology in JAMA. He acknowledged in a Letter to the Editor that the data was fabricated, but he claimed it wasn’t his fault; it was the prisoners’ fault. What research did you do at Holmesburg? My project was about dandruff. Kligman told me it was a disease. In years to come, I came to understand that dandruff is normal; it is dander and not a disease. Our article about the subject received first prize from the Society of Cosmetic Chemists, but it was totally wrong because it was based on the misperception that dandruff was pathologic, rather than physiologic. Furthermore, when I read that article and re-examined the photomicrographs 30 years later, and knowing dermatopathology as I had come to, I realized, with chagrin, that what we biopsied often wasn’t dandruff at all; it was seborrheic dermatitis. We were not dealing with a physiologic process; we were dealing with a real disease unrelated to dandruff. Did he fabricate other data? I only know personally about my project. All of the numbers he submitted and that appeared in the article about dandruff in The Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists reflected a marked increase in the turnover of epidermal cells in “dandruff”, some cases of which were really seborrheic dermatitis which, in fact, may be associated with an increase in turnover of those cells. But some of the patients truly had dandruff, not seborrheic dermatitis, and those specimens should not have shown any increase at all in turnover. Almost certainly the numbers in that article were fabricated. We know that Kligman admitted in the JAMA to fraudulent data about DMSO. It was an admission, not an apology; he blamed the prisoners for the errors. All of this was in keeping with what Kligman used to tell us residents repeatedly: “To paraphrase Claude Bernard, the only reason I do the experiments is to please the critics. I know the answers ahead of time.” Certainly Kligman was not scrupulous about numbers. For one example, we once went together on a fundraising expedition to a pharmaceutical company. After I had presented the work ongoing on dandruff, someone asked, “Al, how many samples have you taken of Pityrosporum for culture from the scalps of these men?” We’d done, let’s say five, but he answered, “We’ve done hundreds”.
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